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To Protect and Serve – Porsche Police Cars (I)

In Part 1, we focus on some of the early adopters of Porsche patrol cars: the German Landes- and Bundespolizei, Austrian Gendarmerie and Swiss Kantonspolizei

The long arm of the law: taken in late 1960s, this picture shows a 912 that served in the Düsseldorf Police Department. Credit: Unattributed

The first experiment

As in many parts of the world, the German police system is decentralized, with each state responsible for administering its own civil-military security force. This organization, which allows a certain degree of freedom in structuring forces according to the needs of each German federal unit, would prove essential for the initial introduction of the first Porsches into police forces worldwide in 1956.

It all began in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. As one of the most densely populated and developed regions in Germany, the area also had one of the largest road networks in the country, with a huge flow of vehicles traveling on the Autobahns that circled the population centers of Dortmund, Düsseldorf, and Cologne.

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